McClellan: My friends await these cookies

Published 10:40 pm Monday, August 4, 2025

Get ready! I am naming names and making a list.

Remember when you were in elementary school, and the teacher would have to leave the room, she would leave someone in charge to “take names”? (I never got to be the name-taker – always talking too much and “out of my seat.”)

Today’s list is in relation to a comment I got from my good buddy, Tom Stone, who is one of the dozen or so men who read my ramblings. His wife, Mac (Margaret Ann to Tom), and I declared ourselves to be the foremost lovers of cookies in the world. She won, I believe, by saying that there were no bad cookies – only some were better than others. I totally agree.

Once again, I am thinking about the debate about raisins. I love them in almost anything, mixed with peanut butter or cream cheese.

I’m taking a poll on raisin lovers. I have not found that 51% of the polled population now likes raisins. Since they have become a popular snack for children, we may be gaining on the “no-raisin” population.

Last week, I shared a recipe from my wonderful days in the Rio Grande Valley mentioning the Lutheran Church where I directed music. The recipe shared was an oatmeal cookie with no raisins. Well, by actual count, I have 10 oatmeal cookie recipes that I have used through the years.

The first was my mother’s, and the next was from Baylor University where, as an elective, I took a ”bride’s course” in which we learned to cook, set the tables, be a perfect hostess, etc.

Well, until I played around with a recipe from a cookbook from the show “Friends,” Phoebe, one of the cast members, shared a recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies (which she said she never took anywhere because these cookies made the other cookies feel bad), I could not say I had found the perfect recipe.

Apparently, my friends who seem to enjoy my cookies eagerly await me stirring up a batch of these: Mark Eberhart, who tries his best weekly to make my hair look like I have not drowned it in the sprinkler system again; Paul Folzenlogen, who says mine are OK but still not up to the cookie standard of his late mother-in-law, Jo Mikeska; the aforementioned Tom Stone; Ned Smith, whose wife, Pam, is one of my besties but will not let a raisin come through the front door; and my son, Jeff, who likes the dough raw just as much as I.

All you guys, I hope to get a double batch made this week.

This is the recipe that I use almost exclusively now:

Phoebe’s and Barb’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1 1/2 sticks butter, softened to room temp

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (oatmeal)

1 1/4 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 cups raisins

1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix in oatmeal, then add all dry ingredients. Add raisins and nuts.

Mix well and drop by heaping tablespoons onto lightly greased (or on parchment paper) on cookie sheets. Bake at 350 degrees until cookies are lightly browned, about 12-15 minutes.

I prefer this cookie slightly soft, not crispy. Makes about 24 large cookies.

Now, come on – let’s be a little kinder to raisins. After all, they are just grapes that stayed out in the sun too long.

— Barbara Richardson McClellan is a longtime food columnist. Write her in care of the Longview News-Journal, P.O. Box 1792, Longview, TX 75606.